Quote from: r0ach on January 21, 2017, 12:48:32 AM

Coincube, you're gonna need to settle down on the excessive religious stuff or belief you actually can impose anything on anyone. The reason gold and silver have value is because they still have value no matter what you ATTEMPT to impose. Gold and silver are money and everything else is credit because it can be defaulted on. Even Anonymint's claim of some magical new coin that solves all problems even if it works is just flat out credit and will never be anything compared to gold and silver as shown below:

Quote from: r0ach on January 20, 2017, 01:22:38 AM

Fiat has always been a derivative of metals, a coupon to exchange for them. What essentially happened is that the bank defaulted on you and you were left holding the bag if you didn't turn your coupons in beforehand. Just like everyone who currently owns fiat is holding the bag still. Fiat can default. Bitcoin can essentially default if the thing becomes unusable somehow. Metals can't default because it exists as more than a concept.

Cryptocurrency is honestly overall just a joke. The only real question is if it was launched as a government scam or failed experiment by some other entity.

r0ach that is not an honest interpretation of what I wrote. I spoke of a hypothetical economic situation where only bitcoin was money and nothing else to only to highlight what the consequences of that scenario would be.

Human history is full of individual humans and groups imposing things the hallmark of progress is that less and less of that happens over time.

Metals are just a token that facilitate economic signaling. They are useful for this purpose because they are rare, durable, take work to obtain, and are difficult to debase. Metals actually can be defaulted on. All that has to happen for this to occur is for people to stop accepting them as a store of value. Their physical presence guarantees only their industrial value. Metals have a monetary value in excess of their industrial value only because there is someone willing to buy them from you who also believes metals have monetary value. Over time this metals network is gradually shrinking and in the long run it will continue to shrink.

This won't effect gold anytime soon. We do not yet have a token that is demonstrably better then gold but silver is a much weaker case as gold is obviously better. Your essay argues that historically silver and copper were also necessary as there was not enough gold in small enough denominations to provide the required liquidity. This may have been true in the past but will only be true in the future if one hypothesizes a collapse of society. If society and government don't collapse (which they won't) then we will simply transition to some new fiat. As a result silver is slowly being demonetized over time and this process will continue. Silver will probably do well in the short term as people look for safe havens to ride out an upcoming monetary reset to some form of global electronic fiat but medium to long term gradual demonetization will continue and therefore I expect silver to underperform both bitcoin and gold.

I also disagree with your dismissal of cryptocurrency. The technology is the first thing to come along in human history that offers the (yet to be fuilfilled) possibility of someday providing a superior token for economic signaling than gold. Dismissing it as a joke is unwise. I agree about the lack of a price floor though. Industrial demand gives metals a price floor cryptocurrency lacks.

Quote from: CoinCube on January 08, 2017, 04:04:24 PM

Gold can essentially be thought of as an eternal partially anonymous POW blockchain. It is mined and mining requires work limiting its supply and allowing it to be used as a store of value. Gold does have counterparty risk. The counterparty is society. The purchaser of gold takes the risk that the gold network (the network of individuals in society willing to buy and own gold) will continue to exist. Governments play a role here in that they have the power through their actions to strengthen or weaken this network but they lack the ability to destroy it entirely. The gold network has existed for thousands of years it has also survived multiple government attempts to eliminate it so the counterparty risk is lower than with anything else that exists.

To displace gold cryptocurrency would need to have a counterparty risk that was lower than gold.
This would require
A) Demonstration of enternal nature currency would need to hold its value over several generations
B) Demonstration of resilience cryptocurrency network it would need to show its ability to survive outlast and not be broken or destroyed by hostile government action.

The jury is still out on whether bitcoin can meet these very high hurdles. However, even if bitcoin fails it seems almost inevitable that something will come along someday that can meet them.